


guilt stains on my pillow

by imperiousheiress



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Canon, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 19:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20263501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperiousheiress/pseuds/imperiousheiress
Summary: “What happened?” he croaks, turning wide, beseeching eyes up at Aziraphale with barely-concealed panic. “What’s wrong?”Aziraphale reaches shaky hands outward, running them across Crowley’s shoulders, down his arms, through the feathery waves of his hair. Crowley is solid and warm beneath his touch. An anchoring presence.Real.“Crowley,”he gasps, small and broken.Cracks across skin.





	guilt stains on my pillow

There are more reasons than one why Aziraphale doesn’t usually engage in the act of sleeping.

He enjoys Crowley’s company, enjoys being close to him, and has made it a habit over the last few months since moving in together to indulge him at night. Usually, this means curling up beside him in their bed, letting Crowley cling to him while he continues to stay awake – sometimes reading, with a cup of cocoa on the nightstand, sometimes just watching over Crowley. Drinking in the sweet serenity that falls over his sleeping face, carding fingers through his hair, basking in the warmth radiating from his skin.

Once in a while, unplanned, Aziraphale drifts off to sleep next to him. When he does, it is normally restless and short-lived. Because nowadays, on the rare instances that Aziraphale actually sleeps, he tends to dream.

It is on one such occasion that he jolts awake in bed with one hand fisted tight in the sheets. He sucks in a sharp, trembling breath as he props himself up on an elbow. It takes a long, tension-filled moment for him to orient himself in the darkness – to realize that he is, in fact, still in bed. The bed he shares with Crowley in the cottage he shares with Crowley in the South Downs. Their own little corner of the earth, carved out into a shape that fits exactly to them.

He’s safe.

He relaxes just marginally, squinting into the room. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, nonetheless _when._ He never keeps track of the time at night except to trace his fingers over Crowley’s delicate cheekbones under the glowing eye of the morning sun. To kiss him as he wakes. He hardly keeps track of time at_ all_, these days. But, from what he can tell, right now there is no hint of any sunlight to be _able_ to look over them through the slits in the blinds. None whatsoever. It must still be the middle of the night. Which means Crowley-

One hand reaches automatically around behind him, feeling for the familiar, warm, man-shaped lump of quilt that he knows must be there. He stops short.

Twisting around to look only confirms what his flailing hand had already found to be true.

The bed is empty. (Save, of course, for himself.) There is nothing there but some rumpled blankets and a gaping void of too-empty, cold air that definitely _shouldn’t _be.

Aziraphale forgets how to breathe.

He bolts up into a sitting position, hands feeling desperately for what could not more clearly be absent. The sheets that crumple beneath the desperate grasp of his digging fingers don’t even hold warmth. 

Panic bubbles up into his chest, an icicle at subzero that rends every bit of him from his ears down to his stomach entirely useless, strangling him from the inside out. _Crowley_.

Images play unbidden behind his eyelids, still fresh in his mind, burned black against his unconscious thoughts.

The shapes of hands clawing at skin, at hair, dragging, _drowning_. Crowley. His skin, shattered like silk-spun glass but somehow still holding him together, what’s left of him a fragile, pitiful thing. Black seeping from the razor drawn cracks in his skin – oozing out inky stains against a porcelain tub. His mouth open in a wordless scream.

Aziraphale swings his legs over the edge of the bed and tries to push himself to a stand, but his shaking limbs won’t obey. His mouth forms the shape of Crowley’s name, but the cry gets stuck halfway through his throat and comes out nothing more than a garbled, desperate nose.

He can’t- There’s no _time_ for this. _Where_ could Crowley have gone? He needs to find him, needs to-

The bedroom door swings open on well-oiled hinges. Midnight light that has managed to fight its way through the sitting room windows sneaks in through the opening, illuminating the dark silhouette of a familiar figure.

Crowley freezes in the doorway, hand still on the knob.

“Oh!” he says, abrupt and pitchy. “You’re awake. Um. I-I just- Aziraphale?”

In the blink of a serpent’s eye, Crowley has entered the room, leaving the door half-open behind him. He crouches at the side of the bed, hands resting warm and steady on Aziraphale’s knees – a grounding touch.

“What happened?” he croaks, turning wide, beseeching eyes up at Aziraphale with barely-concealed panic. “What’s wrong?”

Aziraphale reaches shaky hands outward, running them across Crowley’s shoulders, down his arms, through the feathery waves of his hair. Crowley is solid and warm beneath his touch. An anchoring presence. _Real_.

_“Crowley,”_ he gasps, small and broken. _Cracks across skin._

“Right here, angel,” Crowley murmurs, offering him a crooked smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He runs his hands soothingly up the outsides of Aziraphale’s thighs. “Talk to me.”

Crowley almost goes tumbling backwards when, a moment later, he finds himself with a lap full of quivering angel. Aziraphale clings tight, arms slung around his shoulders and face buried in his neck. Crowley holds him close with one arm encircling his back. His other guides Aziraphale’s hair gently back from his forehead and only stops when it’s cupping his jaw, fingertips against his heartbeat, holding his gaze steady.

“Nightmare,” he admits just above a whisper. Traces a finger down the arch of Crowley’s nose. Uncracked. _Whole_. “Then I woke up and you- you were-”

“In the kitchen,” Crowley finishes. “Got up to stretch and then got peckish.”

“Right,” Aziraphale sighs, voice still sounding rusty. “Of course. How silly of me…”

“Not silly,” Crowley grunts. Pecks a kiss against Aziraphale’s forehead. Bites his lip. “What about?”

“Hmm?”

“Your nightmare. What was-?”

“Oh.” Aziraphale blinks at him for a beat. And then he shudders, pressing himself impossibly closer against Crowley’s chest.

“You don’t have to say. If you don’t want to.”

Aziraphale shakes his head mutely. His hands wander the surface of Crowley’s body, everywhere they can reach – along his thin arms, down the side of his angled face, through his fire-burnt hair. Taking inventory. _Still there_.

“It was- It was about _you_,” Aziraphale says, quietly. He doesn’t miss the flash of panic that dances in Crowley’s eyes. “No, not like- What I mean is that- that Hell took you, or perhaps Heaven. Possibly both. And they-” He swallows, grip tightening where his fingers are wrapped around Crowley’s wrist. “Well, they finished what they’d started.”

“I see,” Crowley says, face melting into an expression of understanding. He twists his hand free of Aziraphale’s grasp but doesn’t go far, only turning it so he can thread their fingers together instead.

“And then, like I said. I woke up and you were-” Aziraphale blurts, breath coming once again in harsh, shallow bursts. “You were _gone_, Crowley. And I didn’t know what to _do_. I can’t- I can’t lose you, I don’t know what-”

“Hey. _Hey_,” Crowley shushes, caressing his thumb over Aziraphale’s fingers to urge him to loosen his titanium grip. He rubs little circles into the small of his back. “I’m with you, ok? Always. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes, but-”

“_But_, if heaven and hell decided to stop minding their own blessed business, I have _you_,” Crowley interrupts, fixing him with a serious look. “You’re on _my side_, and that’s all I ever need. I pity anyone who ever has the misfortune of inciting the full force of your celestial fury.”

Aziraphale cracks a wobbly smile and Crowley’s lips twitch up to match it. They sink further into each other’s arms, held upright only by the way they lean together.

“You’re right, of course,” Aziraphale sighs.

Violence isn’t necessarily his preferred first course of action, but he is by no means incapable of committing it. Even now, thinking about having Crowley stolen away from him, underneath the immediate predilection he has for despair bubbles a sense of vengeance fuelled by something in between righteous fury and hellish wrath. The intensity of it, even trickling beneath the surface, is almost enough to scare him. Almost.

“Is there anything else I can do? Do you need anything?” Crowley asks after a beat.

“Just you,” Aziraphale answers, raw with honesty.

He cups Crowley’s flushed face between his hands; he can feel the warmth of his blush against his palms – real, tangible, and all for him.

“You have me,” Crowley whispers with tenderness enough to make Aziraphale melt.

He pulls Crowley in for a hungry kiss. Love seeps golden bright through every pore of his skin, echoed in the soft movements of his lips, heady and all-encompassing. Aziraphale is dizzy with the rush of it.

After a long minute of this, Aziraphale tilts his head and presses forward and Crowley makes a noise of surprise into his mouth. He jerks back- Or, no, what _really_ happens is that he _falls_ back, catching himself on his hand before he can topple all the way to the ground.

Aziraphale steadies a hand against his chest, blinking into golden eyes that are lower than they had been a moment ago.

“Hello,” he says, smiling.

“Hi.” Crowley flashes him a brilliant grin. “Not that I’m not _loving _this, angel, but what do you say about moving back to the bed, hmm?”

“Yes.” Aziraphale chuckles, wiggling in place atop Crowley’s lap. “I think, perhaps, that would be more comfortable.”

He lifts himself away and stands, offering a hand to Crowley, who accepts it with haste and pulls himself off the floor.

They climb back into bed together. (A task made more difficult by the fact that they refuse to release one another’s hands; but they make it work.) Once settled under the covers, Crowley lifts one arm and Aziraphale happily curls into his side, kissing at his jaw.

“Plan on going back to sleep?” Crowley asks around a yawn.

Aziraphale hums against the hollow of his throat, nipping lightly at the sensitive skin just to hear him hiss.

“Haven’t decided yet,” he answers, trailing a hand lightly down Crowley’s flank. “Admittedly, I’m thinking of a number of more interesting things that we could do instead.”

“I might not be opposed,” Crowley teases. When he tips Aziraphale’s chin up with a finger in order to steal a kiss, he is smiling but his expression is earnest. “But if you _do_ decide to sleep, I’ll be right here when you wake up. Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the prompt: _“Hey, I’m with you, ok? Always.”_
> 
> Originally posted to [tumblr.](https://imperiousheiress.tumblr.com/post/186851213410/14-for-the-ask-meme) Come say hi!


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